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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23883397">everything crooked</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/witching/pseuds/witching'>witching</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Drabble, Fluff, Glasses, M/M, Season/Series 05, Tenderness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:29:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,248</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23883397</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/witching/pseuds/witching</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you. // friedrich nietzsche </i><br/>or: a post-apocalyptic snapshot featuring eyeglasses as a heavy-handed metaphor for growth and knowledge.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>111</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>everything crooked</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jon can’t pinpoint the exact moment in his Becoming where he no longer needs his glasses, but he keeps wearing them well after that, until the apocalypse takes them and breaks them. He has no way of obtaining new ones, and besides, it’s not like it’s a priority, because he can See <em>everything</em> with or without them, but still he misses the comfort and familiarity of having them on his face. They’ve been a part of him since he was a child. </p><p>Sometimes when his vision blurs he reflexively reaches to remove and clean his glasses, before realizing that it’s only tears welling up in his line of sight again. He never thinks to wipe his eyes or blink the tears away before first thinking of his glasses, long after they’re gone. He still nervously goes to adjust them, to push them up his nose the way he’s always done when he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. He often catches Martin laughing softly in the corner of his eye, a fond and gentle gesture showing just how far they’ve come. </p><p>Martin still has his glasses for a while after Jon loses his. He’s careful not to break them because he actually does still need them to see. The end of the world can take away the need for food and drink, can render moot the human urge to sleep, but somehow couldn’t do for Martin’s eyes what becoming the Archivist did for Jon’s. Still, it’s not mocking when he sees Jon’s unthinking movements, his immediate consideration for his glasses like a phantom limb. It’s loving and sympathetic.</p><p>In a rare moment of stillness, Martin asks if Jon would like to try on his glasses. Jon’s confused - why would he want that? what would it do for him? doesn’t Martin need them? - and Martin gives him a look halfway between sadness and amusement, tells him it’s just a thing people do sometimes, for fun. You remember fun, Jon? Back when things were normal, and you would gather with your friends and on occasion you would trade glasses and remark upon how different your prescriptions were and how silly you looked with a different shape on your face than usual?</p><p>Jon smiles, and then he smiles wider from relief at the fact that he hasn’t forgotten how to smile, and he nods his head. Martin removes his glasses and turns them around to place them gingerly, tenderly on Jon’s face, settling too low on the bridge of his nose and trying valiantly to slide all the way down because his face is much smaller than Martin’s. Jon feels it, but he can't see it, and he doesn't even want to try using his power to locate the nearest mirror. Curious, he asks for permission to look through Martin’s eyes to see how they look on him, and Martin readily gives it.</p><p>It’s overwhelming, seeing himself from Martin’s perspective. It’s the first time he’s tried this so explicitly, so directly, and it’s a heady feeling of knowledge, but it’s more than that. There’s a slightly vertiginous response to looking down upon his own face like this, but it’s more than that, too. Jon wasn’t expecting the rush of emotion that would come with it, wasn’t expecting that putting himself in Martin’s eyes would leave him inhaling and exhaling and never catching any air, only love and love and love.</p><p>Even through all of that, Jon can see that he looks ridiculous. If he puts aside the ocean of adoration pressing in at the edges of his mind, he can look at his own face with a clinical, analytical eye, without the bias of Martin's thoughts. The glasses are terribly incongruous with his face, different from his own in every way; before he lost them, Jon had worn the same simple rectangular wire-rimmed style for years, small and black and unobtrusive. Martin's are wide and round with a plastic tortoiseshell frame, statement glasses, and Jon has always thought they were quite fashionable, even back when he might have expressed that sentiment with a hint of contempt coloring his tone at the very concept of <em>fashion</em>. </p><p>The feeling must show on his face in entirely the wrong way, because Martin suddenly looks thoroughly concerned, and maybe a tad hurt? Jon pushes through his own emotions, pushes past the way he feels a bit lightheaded and dizzy to ask Martin what's wrong. Martin shakes his head, tries to school his expression into something neutral and unaffected, fails miserably and mumbles a mildly incoherent apology. Jon is completely lost, has no idea what Martin could possibly have to be sorry about, and he says so.</p><p>Martin shuffles his feet and stares at the ground and mutters something about making Jon uncomfortable, something about being stupid, something about being unable to keep his mind in check. Jon frowns up at him, his heavy brow furrowed so deep and so strong and so simply adorable in juxtaposition with Martin's glasses. He assures Martin that he is not uncomfortable at all, that he's just fine, and reaches up to cup his cheek with care. Then, realizing Martin is squinting slightly, he removes the glasses from his own face, cleans them quickly on his shirt, and slips them back onto Martin, straightening them with satisfaction, almost pride before returning to cradling Martin's face, now with both hands.</p><p>It gets quiet, then, as Martin's lip quivers and Jon stares into him with nothing but his human eyes, large and unblinking and deeply, frighteningly green. Martin asks him, bashful and uncertain, what he saw through Martin's eyes, for his own peace of mind. He feels self-conscious not knowing, wondering what brought that look to Jon's face, left with his own anxious conjecture. </p><p>Jon tells him everything, because he can do that now - now that they're together, and now that he allows himself to speak his mind and feel his feelings. He tries to put into words the way that everything felt different from Martin's perspective, because it didn't actually change anything, visually, and it wasn't quite a direct transfer of emotion, but it was new and intense and unique. He explains how he always knew Martin had feelings for him, but he never understood until now just how profoundly <em>loved</em> he is. It's <em>overwhelming</em> how much love there is, Martin, have you been feeling this strongly all this time? Since before Peter, before Tim, before Sasha? Since we were in research? It's so <em>much</em>.</p><p>Of course, Martin knows how much he loves Jon. Martin is almost positive that nobody has ever understood love as acutely as he does when he looks at Jon, so this all makes sense to him. This is all par for the course in Martin's life, this tidal wave of undiluted love, so he's not surprised or anything, but it feels good to see how awed and how <em>happy</em> Jon is with the knowledge of it. True, they're living in a hellish fearscape and they're embarking on a grand quest to recover the world they knew, but it doesn't seem quite so horrible with Jon. Martin thinks about corrective lenses, he thinks about the intimacy of sharing, he thinks about seeing things in a new way. </p><p>Then he thinks about Elias, and he looks at the panopticon in the distance, and he removes his glasses and slips them into the breast pocket of his sweater. Sometimes it's best not to have to see everything.</p>
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